Rivera Convicted Again In Sitter's Slaying

Lengthy Deliberation Before Verdict

After four days of deliberation, a Lake County jury convicted Juan Rivera on Friday of raping and killing 11-year-old Holly Staker as she baby-sat two small children in a Waukegan apartment in 1992.

As the jury foreman read the verdict, Rivera, 25, bowed his head as one of his attorneys, Henry Lazzaro, draped his right arm around him.

The trial was Rivera's second. He was convicted of the crime in 1993 and sentenced to life in prison, but three years later the Illinois Appellate Court overturned the conviction on several minor errors and ordered a new trial.

The verdict was read moments after the jury trudged into court to deliver its verdict after nearly 36 hours of deliberations. It was the longest a Lake County jury has taken to reach a verdict in recent memory, according to State's Atty. Michael Waller.

Rivera, who did not take the stand during the trial, faces life in prison without parole when he is sentenced Nov. 20 by Judge Christopher Starck.

The verdict ended a three-week retrial that included graphic photographs, compelling testimony and controversy over the validity of two signed confessions.

In convicting Rivera of murder, the jury sided with police officers who stood firm in their testimony that Rivera was alert and coherent when he confessed to stabbing Holly.

Prosecutors Mike Mermel and Matthew Chancey based much of their case on the statements Rivera made the morning of Oct. 30, 1992, and the credibility of the four investigators who took them.

Defense attorneys Patrick Tuite and Lazzaro attempted to portray Rivera as a man of borderline intelligence who confessed after relentless questioning by overzealous interrogators.

In this trial, the little girl whom Holly was watching the night she was killed took the witness stand and identified Rivera as Holly's killer. She had not testified in the earlier trial.

Taylor Arena, now 8, said Rivera carried her into the bedroom where her mother later discovered her. In his confession Rivera said he carried the girl into her bedroom when she started to cry, and prosecutors said this was information only the killer could have known.

Holly's slaying occurred on an evening when she was watching the 2 1/2-year-old Taylor and her 5-year-old brother, Blake, in a Waukegan two-flat.

Holly, who was about to enter 6th grade, had been stabbed 27 times in the heart, throat and abdomen and had been sexually assaulted, according to an autopsy report.

Her murder prompted one of the most extensive investigations in Lake County history.

In early October 1992, investigators met with Rivera at Hill Correctional Center in Galesburg, where he had just begun serving a sentence for burglary.

Rivera initially told police he had been at a party at a Waukegan home the night Holly was killed. Later, police learned there was no party that night. Rivera became a prime suspect after he changed his story several times and gave other alibis that proved false.

According to testimony, sometime after midnight on Oct. 30, 1992, Rivera broke down crying and signed the first confession.

In it he detailed the events of that day from when he took cocaine to when he stabbed Holly, broke the rear door with a mop to make it appear that a burglary had taken place and then ran home to shower and burn his clothes.

Later that afternoon, Rivera signed another confession in which he said he struggled with Holly and killed her because she ridiculed his inability to have sex.